The entire Western world is suffering a painful lesson about the fantasy of limitless government resources. The pool of evil, faceless rich people who can be taxed to provide socialist benefits turns out to be quite limited indeed. Absurd benefits promised to unionized employees are not a perpetual motion engine for State growth. They’re a locomotive racing toward the brick wall of insolvency. The ridiculous concept of static analysis lies in ruins, as it becomes painfully obvious to all but the most delusional true believers that rising tax rates and government spending do strangle economic growth over the long term.

The mythology of wise and compassionate government is drowning in a mixture of oil bubbling up from the Gulf of Mexico, and sleaze pouring out of Washington. The government has many vital duties to perform, but as it grows in size, it becomes less interested in performing them. Its own ambitions take priority over its responsibilities to a private sector it increasingly comes to view as an adversary…since the State must both demonize the private sector to conceal its own failures, and use compulsive force to extract resources from workers and businesses. No one should harbor any further misconceptions about maintaining the transparency of the State as it swells in size